The Exile. Kesha, Interrupted

October 26, 2016 – Media Mention

The New York Times MagazineQuoted | Dan Stone

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Kesha was tired; Kesha was in her Saturn return. A Saturn return, she explained to me, happens to people between the ages of 27 and 31. “It’s when [expletive] gets really real and really hard, and you have to face life as an adult,” she said. Her hair was wet, and she wore eyelash extensions and no makeup. Her face, close up, is covered in freckles the color of very light coffee that make her look younger than 29. “It’s just a period in your life where you just kind of go from being more of a kid to a real adult.”

She had been practicing this September day onstage at the Brooklyn club Warsaw, singing high and singing low, readying for her show that night, for which there had to be glam, a word that fits no intuitive part of speech and means that her hair and makeup were getting done. She used to cover those freckles, but she doesn’t anymore. She dressed in one of her two Nudie suits, the white one, the Western wear customized for her with an embroidered eye that matched the tattoo of an eye on the palm of her hand; a heart with a dagger in it; a few flowers; a couple of crosses. The Nudie suit was the same one she wore to the Billboard Music Awards in May. This is what she has taken to performing in since all this went down — fewer leotards, no more general pantslessness.